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ideonexus writes "NFL Linebacker Junior Seau's suicide this week bears a striking similarity to NFL Safety Dave Duerson's suicide last year, who shot himself in the chest so that doctors could study his brain, where they found the same chronic traumatic encephalopathy that has been found in the brains of 20 other dead football players. Malcom Gladwell stirred up controversy in 2009 by comparing professional football to dog fighting for the trauma the game inflicts on players' brains. With mounting evidence that the repeated concussions football players receive during their careers causing a lifetime of brain problems, it raises serious concerns about America's most popular sport and ethical questions for its fanbase."

Except basketball today can still be played with baskets. Today's rules and everything, except the equipment from the late 19th century.

The only difference is that the game would slow down a bit as someone has to retrieve the ball from the basket after every successful shot. It's the only reason why the bottom was removed from the basket in the first place - to not have to stop play and have someone get on a ladder, climb up, retrieve ball, climb down, keep ladder, and restart play.

American football is completely different from the other football where most interactions with the ball involve feet (some involve hands and heads).

Basketball's 1906 switch from bottomless peach baskets as goals to nets hanging from metal hoops doesn't change the fundamental character of the game, unlike the changes that were made to soccer in the rugby fork (of which American football is itself a fork). One could still mount a peach basket of appropriate diameter on a backboard and play basketball.

The problem with American football vs Rugby is in American football the gear (helmets) are better and the players use them as weapons. Without a helmet, you're probably not going to attack someone like you would if you were wearing one.

Which is why they're called horseball... Wait, horseball sounds like something *entirely* different.

Yes. A horse ball is a giant transparent sphere that you put a horse in so that it can run around without getting into tiny nooks and crannies and to protect it from getting accidentally stepped on by larger creatures.

Since I apparently wasn't being clear enough originally -- yes, the rules have changed such that that is now the case. Originally, however, the game included much more kicking of the ball, either as a means of scoring, as a means of advancing the ball up the field or as a means of passing between players on the same team. American football, rugby and association football, aka soccer, all trace back to a small pool of similar games called "football". Each of those games, however, diverged in their rules sets. What the majority of the world calls "football" is most similar to the original games. Rugby changed its name as well as its rules. American football changed its rules but not its name. It's a simple concept, really, and I don't get why people refuse to understand.

There is a reason name changes tend to follow changes of whatever facts are relevant. USA is no longer called "colonies" because they no longer are colonies. So if the sport today has almost nothing to do with either feet or balls then it should be called something else. Perhaps now is the time to call it Brain Damage.

But many words don't change even when their definition does. When you call someone "mister" you're not indicating that they own the property your rent. (Mister comes from monsieur which comes from "my sire".) You still "hang up" your telephone when you end calls on your cell phone. I'm sure there are quite a few other examples I don't care to look up though.

Also, you're ignoring the fact that "ball" does not require an object to be spherical and field goals, punts, place kicks and drop kicks are still very much in use in the game.

"Soccer" is known as "Football" all around the world. Both in English and non-English speaking countries. In North America it is known by its Spanish spelling "futbol" in both the US (a big portion of the US is Spanish speaking) as well as Mexico. Also in Central and South America it is unanimously known by the same name.

Then there's Africa with "major" populations that speak English, French and Spanish. In all these countries "football" is the most popular sport. In Asia and Europe the same thing plays out.

The only countries that don't call it "football" are minor countries such as the US with a few million people that don't really play the sport all that much. Billions around the world beg to differ.;)

Yeah except they know the cause of long-term brain damage. The brain receives a sudden shock, and connections between neurons "stretch". Like a spring the neurons will gradually return to their normal lengths, but not without consequences.

The stretching leaves behind intracellular damage, and eventually that damage causes the neuron's dendrite to stop producing transmitter chemicals. The neuron then commits suicide (apoptosis). After you lose enough neurons you end-up like these football players and boxers.

So to simplify: Neurons are like springs and when they experience head trauma, they stretch beyond their ability to reheal properly. Then they die.

My understanding is yes. And it isn't just football players who are prone. There is a growing body of evidence in professional hockey and boxing that similar kinds of injuries lead to long-term behavioral and cognitive disorders. Remember, the brain does it all, so if impacts are severe enough to nail one kind of higher function, it's enough bugger up another. Whether it's the cerebellum or the cerebrum, they're all vulnerable.

You are misusing logic. If we went by that standard, nothing would be responsible for anything.

It is reasonable to assume that thousands of head-on collisions would damage the brain. Even one car crash can cause lifelong tissue damage; imagine what hundreds or thousands do.

That stipulated, you look for evidence. No-one had actually looked before, not really; we're sociologically prone to not look, because we like football. It's like asking people to look for brain damage caused by kneeling to pray to God, and I don't think that's too extreme a comparison.

Evidence was looked for, and found in abundance. Football players who received such shocks to the brain show, post-mortem, significant damage to the tissues. Live players who submit to tests show similar damage to their living brains. Such damage is not normally found in people who do not receive shocks to the brain for a living. It is found in those who do.

At this point, this is a done deal. Throwing people around and suddenly slamming them to a stop causes brain damage resulting in reduced capacity, depression, strange behavior, and eventually, for some, death by repeated trauma.

Now. What do we do about it? Football, American style, is crippling and killing the players. Do we stop? If not, why not? How far does the human delusion go in the face of reality?

In a similarly compromised position. Whether that means a ban or not I don't know. I'm of little mind to go telling grown adults what they can do with their brains. There is, however, the issue of kids. It's becoming a huge issue in hockey, where some kinds of behavior have been banned, but the evidence that body checks and the like are dangerous, in fact more so for children than for adults.

What does that mean? Maybe it means you can't play football before you reach the age of majority. That in and of itself would completely fuck up professional football, as highschool football seeds college football which seeds the pro game. Cut out the first, and you'll likely lose a lot of talent.

Since the plight of athletes such as Mike Webster and Andre Waters was publicized (even before Duerson), the NFL was also making efforts to reduce concussions through rule changes. Besides modifying the rule for "defenseless receivers", they have a rule that requires all athletes who lose consciousness on the field or are seen to take a blow to the head be examined by a physician on the sideline. If they are determined to have a concussion, t

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I think the best way to reduce brain injuries now is to simply remove the helmets from the game. Sure, there will be more broken noses, but you will see brain injuries drop substantially. People just don't lead with their heads when moving full speed at a target heading full speed back.

Emmit Smith [slashdot.org] suggested returning to leather helmets for just this reason.
The helmet has become a weapon. It does not matter what the "rules" say because the profit incentive will always provide an end around (hehe). The team doctors will likely bow to the pressures of the owners who are writing the bazillion dollar salary checks, and clear the players for play. Unless the NFL is prepared to make a real stand in favor of people, as opposed to profits, (yeah, like that MIGHT happen)..the players will continue to suffer

Then maybe we need to stop listening to "think of the children" alarmists who believe that all risk can be eliminated from life. We all have to take risks with our wealth, our time, our safety, and our reputations every time we wake up in the morning.

I apologize for my poorly-worded joke. A literal interpretation of the submission's title seems to indicate that any increase in "evidence of football" causes brain damage. This would explain why football fans appear to be brain damaged, since they are frequently exposed to "evidence of football." I don't actually think that there is a problem establishing causation here.

They do tests with accelerometers in helmets actually. And there is a big industry right now in trying to design safer helmets.

The headline is a bit misleading in that many of these studies have concluded the sheet number of small hits is actually more dangerous than the few big ones that lead to concussions. Even players who never get a concussion can be looking at a lifetime of neurological conditions. If I recall, the average NFL player dies over 10 years earlier than the average American. Considering these are frequently relatively wealthy people with good health care, that should say something.

We used to say football was barbaric when it was played without much in the way of helmets and pads, but the real issue is that we have people over 300 pounds who are pure muscle and can run a 4.5 40 yard dash. People hit with far more force in football today than they did 50 years ago. And that trend will likely continue. At some point, something will have to give.

BTW, I love the game of football, but I am concerned about the well being of players. And I'm not sure I'd let my son play if I had one.

Dr. Cantu at Boston Universities' chronic traumatic encephalopathy department said their study showed the average first-string college football player in a given year experiences between 800 and 1,500 blows to the head of a G-force greater than 20.

The fact that a sport that is basically glorified violence causes mental problems in the participants over the course of time does not come as a huge surprise to me.

In fact, I think that when the country finally wakes up and realizes that the right thing to do is to abandon violent sports like American football, rugby, and hockey (at least, hockey as it is commonly played today) for good, it will be a huge net positive for America and, indeed, for the world.

It is not just the NFL. The NHL had three [wikipedia.org] player [wikipedia.org] suicides [wikipedia.org] this summer alone. All three of these players were enforcer type players who routinely fought to earn their salaries. The link between professional athletes getting hit in the head a lot and the issues you described is getting hard to deny.

Well, it brings up a lot of interesting questions, like, if these consistent head blows causes serious, lasting brain damage, how do we deal with minors playing the sport? Is it tantamount to neglect if you let your kids play football? (I won't let mine, for this very reason) The south might rise up a second time if we told them no more high school football. That's where studies help. Evidence gives us cause to make decisions.

Ahhhh, now you're reaching. Young kids don't head the ball that much, and a ball is highly unlikely to cause a concussion. Neck injuries, now that's possible -- but I've known people who broke their ankles tripping on the sidewalk, too. If you use your body, eventually you will get injured somehow. The only option is to stay in bed. You don't, however, have to crash head-first into a 250lb armored football player at a full run, however. That's a little different.

Objective: To determine the presence of chronic traumatic brain injury in professional soccer players.

Methods: Fifty-three active professional soccer players from several professional Dutch soccer clubs were compared with a control group of 27 elite noncontact sport athletes. All participants underwent neuropsychological examination. The main outcome measures were neuropsychological tests proven to be sensitive to cognitive changes incurred during contact and collision sports.

Results: The professional soccer players exhibited impaired performances in memory, planning, and visuoperceptual processing when compared with control subjects. Among professional soccer players, performance on memory, planning, and visuoperceptual tasks were inversely related to the number of concussions incurred in soccer and the frequency of "heading" the ball. Performance on neuropsychological testing also varied according to field position, with forward and defensive players exhibiting more impairment.

Conclusion: Participation in professional soccer may affect adversely some aspects of cognitive functioning (i.e., memory, planning, and visuoperceptual processing).

If it happens in adults, isn't it also likely to happen in kids? They may be hard-headed at times, but still...

And yet studies show that soccer players who header the ball also experience cognitive loss (I posted one example further up-thread). And unlike football players, soccer players don't have any head protection. You don't have to get a concussion to have damage.

Why we need doctors to tell us this? Isn't it pretty obvious that if you get hit in the head a lot, it will cause brain damage?

There are three things at play:

1. Our understanding of the (sometimes subtle) effects of relatively mild concussions and subconcussive trauma is actually a great deal better now than it was until fairly recently. Being able to view trauma-induced lesions(albeit by postmortem slice-n-stain) is fairly new. It has never been news that dramatic blows to the head will kill and/or disable you good and hard; but the epidemiology of correlating apparently minor ones with risks of a variety of psychological and degenerative conditions over time is tricker.

2. It takes time, if it happens at all, for those pointy-headed 'experts' with their 'evidence' to make it through the wall of popular opinion. Historically, the accepted treatment for most forms of sporting trauma was 'Man up and rub some dirt in it, pussy.' The idea that this might actually be a wildly stupid idea was not an immediate hit.

3. Frequent head trauma is commonly an occupational hazard. Football, boxing, hockey, military service, etc. Shockingly, most industries strongly resist the notion that their employees are being sickened or harmed by the conditions in their workplaces, because that might lead to increased liability, mitigation costs, or even having to shut down. It doesn't help that, in the case of football, much of the treatment of players was handled by team doctors, who have a certain incentive to keep the livestock in the game and producing, and among whom suggestions of serious harm were not a good way to make yourself popular...

You named boxing and football as occupations with deceleration injuries comparable to, say, military service. No... soldiers do not receive hundreds or thousands of collision/stop injuries. A single bomb would do it; but that's just one shock, not thousands. If they show brain damage, they should be sent home, and frequently are.I can't think of any other non-sport job that requires head-on collisions as a price to play. Both boxing and football are killer sports.

The brain damage is obvious (well, at least to anyone who thinks about it - I honestly doubt the majority of American Football fans do).

What has been in dispute is whether the adoption of safety measures (helmets, padding, etc) has helped or hurt. The tide of medical opinion seems to be that it has hurt, that all the gear gives an illusion of safety that doesn't really exist, leading to more frequent, high momentum impacts. What has also been in dispute is whether players have been placed in excessive danger due to the machismo involved - that concussions have been treated as no big deal, resulting in players with potentially serious head injuries being ordered back onto the field, and that the desire to win at all costs by managers, sponsors and players has resulted in a level of injury and death that simply wouldn't exist if the players were more concerned with playing well than with the scoreline.

Certainly, you don't see reports of multiple suicides by New Zealand All Black Rugby players (although Rugby is arguably a more vicious game). Soccer players have reported deafness as a result of head injuries, but you don't see the massive incidents of domestic violence. That's usually left to the fans. (Ooops, did I say that?) Formula 1 drivers suffer incredible head trauma, but injuries of that kind are treated with extreme caution (neurologists are included amongst the circuit medics and brain scans after an accident are standard).

I'm not saying any of these sports are "safe" - soccer has worked on making the ball lighter to reduce head trauma, which is good, but all of these involve participants suffering brain injuries from time to time. What I am saying is that American Football appears to have both a higher incidence of brain injury AND a greater severity of brain injury when incidents occur than any of the other sports I listed. Which is impressive, when you think about it, given that F1 cars can slam into a barrier at 170 mph.

Of course, the big difference is that most F1 drivers have a major shunt perhaps two or three times a year, but American Football players can suffer head trauma every play and there will typically be between 60-80 of those per game (http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/plays-per-game) over 16 games per season (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_regular_season), which gives you between 960-1280 potential head injuries per year.

Repetitive, untreated head trauma is going to be worse than a very few, treated head injuries even if the latter are more severe in a given incident.

Ok, what about soccer? It has plenty of head impacts. Well, according to studies, players head the ball 6-12 times in a game. (http://journals.lww.com/neurosurgery/Fulltext/2012/01000/Heading_in_Soccer___Dangerous_Play_.1.aspx) That's a tenth the number of head impacts of American Football. The mass of a soccer ball is 1 lb, but the mass of an American Football player can be 290 lbs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Castillo_%28American_football%29) If the impacts were at the same speed, you've vastly more momentum per collision in American Football -plus- vastly more collisions.

There's plenty of evidence that some brain injuries occur in soccer, though it's not easy to see how this can be reduced much further given that we've gone from pig-skin leather soccer balls to ultra-light plastic. (http://www.oysan.org/Assets/oysa_assets/doc/coachingarticles/ConcussionFindings.pdf and http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(03)00579-9/fulltext) [thelancet.com] This needs to be publicly recognized. It is NOT a risk-free sport and brain trauma IS inevitable.

Rugby is perhaps a more difficult sport to explain. Head crunches aren't uncommon (although leg tackles are the standard), all manner of injuries are very common, and the forces are absolutely incredible. (A rugby scrum can put 20 tonnes of force down your spine.) True, the All Black's Haka (htt

Why we need doctors to tell us this? Isn't it pretty obvious that if you get hit in the head a lot, it will cause brain damage?

Because the NFL has been pretty proactive about rules regarding helmets and head injury. Also, because there's vast amounts of money involved. But most importantly, the growing evidence is not that repeated concussions that rise to the clinical level are bad -- which we can rightfully assume is true, just as repeatedly getting a bad bruise on one's thigh is unlikely to be good long-term -- but that less severe head impacts have a cumulative effect. That's what the NFL is most afraid of, and rightfully so, because it would mean elimination of the sport as we know it, and the potential liability would be enormous.

Because of the vast sums of money involved, it will take solid, iron-clad, repeated and verified medical evidence to make the necessary changes to protect the health of the NFL players. Or, an acceptance by the players and NFL that long-term health impact is expected, with appropriate supportive care provided for the lifetime of the players.

and with the millions of dollars they are paid, how many of them donated to research? Football is modern day gladiator fighting, they are paid to kill each other on the field of battle, not to tickle each other. this is a job hazard and you have have to accept that, if it wasn't you wouldn't be paid as much.

and with the millions of dollars they are paid, how many of them donated to research?

What? I don't understand why I need to pay for research when my employer endangers me. Example:

and with the millions of dollars coal miners were paid, how many of them donated to research? Coal mining is modern day pyramid building, they are paid to sacrifice their bodies so the industrial revolution can push us forward, not to be coddled. this is a job hazard and you have have to accept that, if it wasn't you wouldn't be paid as much.

There are over one thousand lawsuits by former football players against the league [go.com]. This was covered by NPR a while ago, and it sounds like players are saying "I got hit here, in this game. I had X symptoms. Coach told me I didn't need to see the medical professional because he needed me back in the game. I now experience Y long term ailments." Regardless of the amount they are each paid, this could be compared to mesothelioma from asbestos exposure while installing installation. The NFL has deep pockets, let these players have their day in court.

Check out Shanahan's suspensions of NHL players [nhl.com]. I will tell you right now that this is the NHL attempting to wash their own hands of similar liabilities. Three hockey players killed themselves very recently.

Look, in Roman times, people used to die building the aqueducts... that doesn't mean we accept deaths when companies build dams to service communities. We have technology, engineering, medicine, etc to help us be better than that. We're better than we were thousands of years ago. We don't need the gladiators to die anymore. The NFL is making bank off these players -- even after the players themselves are all millionaires that squander their money within a few years of the end of their career. The courts will decide what liability the NFL must assume.

Look, in Roman times, people used to die building the aqueducts... that doesn't mean we accept deaths when companies build dams to service communities. We have technology, engineering, medicine, etc to help us be better than that.

The trouble is, if these doctors are right, it doesn't sound like there's anything technology or engineering is going to do about it. The players already wear the most advanced helmets in sports. But no helmet is going to prevent your brain from smashing into the inside of your skull when your head experiences a sudden deceleration. It sounds like the only thing to do is to change the way the game is played. The problem there is that the NFL rules seem to change all the time, not for the benefit of the players, but so that the NFL can maximize profits from the games. They've been engineering game play with that goal in mind for years. They're not going to want to change the game now because the players get hurt.

and with the millions of dollars they are paid, how many of them donated to research?

Well from the summary:

Malcom Gladwell stirred up controversy in 2009 by comparing professional football to dog fighting for the trauma the game inflicts on players' brains, but with mounting evidence that the repeated concussions football players receive during their careers causing a lifetime of brain problems

I recall Michael Vick had quite the experiment set up to study this but, of course, PETA shut him down.

Football players have operated for a century without the knowledge their brains are being damaged. Now, they discover that they are being slowly killed, and will die young if they are lucky, or live to an old age of dementia and depression. "Get over it" ain't gonna do it. They did not accept the hazard; no one had looked for its existence before. Informed consent was lacking.Now that we know we're operating the Hunger Games in slow motion, what are we going to do about it? Lie to ourselves? Ignore it? No other business would be allowed to continue killing its employees this way. Money has nothing to do with it. How much do you think dying at 42 with a damaged brain is worth? The current crop of former players are just now finding out they are doomed. The younger ones don't know or don't care - that's part of being young.If there was a televised game, let's say, of watching college kids hit themselves in the head with hammers until they drop - would that be legal? Would bets be allowed? How about Russian Roulette? Minefield dodging? Setting yourself on fire? All those things would just kill you instantly. Football kills you ten years after your retire, when no one is looking.

this is a job hazard and you have have to accept that, if it wasn't you wouldn't be paid as much.

How can you accept hazards you don't know exist?

Every footballer knows that they could suffer major injuries during a game that could end their career or outright cripple them. They have accepted that.

How many knew that the many minor impacts that occur throughout what would naively be called an injury-free career would result in them suffering long-term brain damage? How many had coaches and trainers tell them that hard hits which didn't obviously injure them were insignificant and they should keep playing?

How could they have even known this when medical science didn't? Just assume?

Lastly, the idea that sports players are paid based on the amount of physical danger involved, rather than say the popularity of the sport, their team, and their personal ability as it relates to how much money the sport takes in, is stupid. The idea that this hazard pay had already incorporated the previously unknown risks covered in this study even more so.

The football players particularly. Some of them weren't so smart in their senior year or after graduation. At the time, we made fun of them, which in retrospect kind of sucks. They may have been hostile, bullying and overly aggressive, but brain damage isn't something I'd wish on anyone.

I played football in HS. It was quite joke among the volleyball and tennis players about how dumb football players were. I asked them to compare they're playbooks to ours (end of discussion). It takes more intelligence to be able to play football well than lots of other sports. You not only need to know your responsibilities, you often need to know what other players are doing, and the appropriate reaction to the actions of any of your 8-11 opponents. The way a large number of NFL prospects wash out is they can't pick up their team's playbook fast enough.

And, you have to know all of this COLD. As in, you have to know your playbook so well it's instinctive. You don't have 2-3 seconds to dredge up the new formation and route when your QB calls an audible.

If the NFL went back to the type of padding/helmets they had just 20 years ago the players wouldn't be doing this damage to one another. The "armor" has evolved substantially over that time to minimize (cause?) damage, but humans have not.

If the NFL went back to the type of padding/helmets they had just 20 years ago the players wouldn't be doing this damage to one another. The "armor" has evolved substantially over that time to minimize (cause?) damage, but humans have not.

This makes more sense than you'd think. Boxing injuries and deaths/increase/ when you add gloves, the reason being that hands, unprotected, can't take much more punishment than a face before the brain stops letting you use them. Protected, however, all that energy gets transmitted to the brain and the hands don't take any damage.

Different codes, but no padding and no separate teams for offensive and defensive, and the ball is in play for the entire match, not for a fraction of the time in American Football. I'd guess that the specialized American Footballers couldn't survive another code, yet there is a steady flow of Australian Footballers into America.

While those are some good hits and the manliness of those gents cannot be questioned, the hits seen in the higher levels of American football are much nastier because of the tendency for players to lead with their heads. The padding and in particular, the helmet, gives the players a false sense of security and leads them to literally "sacrifice their bodies" while making hits.

Some fun examples:

Helmet to helmet contact: (the guy that got the worst of this hit was out multiple games with a concussion)http://w [youtube.com]

The long term effect of repeated blows to the head is IMHO the biggest issue facing contact sports, especially (American/Canadian) football and ice hockey. Based on the growing body of research it appears that the the sports are inherently unsafe as they are currently played. Football is the number 1 spectator sport in America, so you can bet the NFL does not want to change too much, and yet they are now being sued by former players [washingtonpost.com] who have suffered concussions during their career. How can the sport be changed to protect the players? Helmet technology will likely continue to improve, but enough to protect from brain damage with repeated hits? Does the NFL become the NTFL (National Touch Football League)? Do we still have linemen block to protect the quarterback, or do pass rushers count to four-Mississippi before rushing?

Hockey does not seem to be as plagued as football, and eliminating fighting would prevent a lot of injuries as the basic game does not lead to as much trauma to the head as football. Possibly the biggest question for all sports is what the future may hold if parents keep their children off the playing fields. That's something that will be gradual but I expect that the pool of available talent will start to dwindle as the smarter and more talented athletes choose safer career paths (baseball, investment banking?) and only the desperate take chances with their future sanity and health.

The NFL needs to set aside a SUSBTANTIAL of their $9 billion cash flow to researching better helmets. I don't mean moderate improvements. I'm talking about something that can wick away nearly all of the impact force to other parts of the body. This is the single biggest existential threat to the game, and it has got to be resolved.

Won't happen. It's been proven that in the NHL at least, the more armour you give the players, the more risks they take AND the harder they hit. Better helmets won't help the NFL or the players without rendering them immobile. Unless you take away all contact, there's very little to be done.

Unless by 'helmet' one means 'comically large pillow enveloping the head and extending for several meters', there really isn't too much that can be done.

Helmets, if properly designed, can be very effective at preventing penetration(as with the ones designed to stop shrapnel or moderate-velocity bullets), as well as mitigating otherwise bloody scalp damage and downgrading what would be skull fractures into mere helmet fractures.

However, there just isn't enough room inside a helmet to achieve a safe deceleration rate. When a running player crashes into something, the brain has to go from X m/s to 0 m/s over a very short distance. Even assuming arbitrarily good material science, allowing you to space out that deceleration however you wish, you have a problem. Even if the player were encased in a perfectly rigid shell, that magically deadened all transmitted impact, you still have the inertia of the brain shoving it up against the interior of the skull.

Given that severe head trauma is even worse than mild to moderate head trauma, helmets aren't a bad idea; they can reduce damage; but if repeated minor damage is a serious problem, a sport that involves huge numbers of collisions is a problem...

Seau was a great person AND a great football player. He did a lot for kids in our community. He was well-known for his intensity and charm; it is so sad that he was feeling down with no way out and this is the result. Rest in peace.

Hopefully this is a nail in the coffin for College Football. The fact that playing the sport is now seen to be damaging to the mind and brain at the basest levels should quell some of the "We're turning out well-balanced scholars, fit in body and mind" that advocates are spouting. Colleges need football teams like fish need bicycles, and universities of all sorts should be the last institutions encouraging this.

Not a chance in hell. Too much money. And college football is a religion in the U.S. Watch and observe denial behavior in action - it's educational. This will take decades to stop, and the supporters will scream "Liberals and government don't tell us what to do!" and "You haven't proven anything!" the entire bloody way. I can name the other topics they similarly fight the bad fight on, but that would depress all of us. A century from now, with thousands of dead players dissected and shown to be damaged, they will STILL print textbooks to tell their children that It Is A Controversy.

The football players are exactly like fighting dogs, made to be just about the game, until they are torn up and spit out, then hopefully they have support or made enough money to support themselves afterwards. Jerry McGuire sums it up, its all about getting the money for the time you play, and your whole family is hoping you get through it in one piece, and with reward to show for it, because there are only so many spots as commentators for washed up football players....sadly.

There are lots of other lifestyle-damaging injuries in American football. Ask Jim Otto [sfgate.com] -- he's had his knees replaced not once, but twice, not to mention dozens of other surgeries, arthritis, infections, an amputation, etc.

If you are an investigative reporter, I suggest that an interesting topic for your research would be to pick a particular team, say, the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and track down all the players. How are they doing -- physically? As well as their peers in other professions? As well as they expected, when they were younger?

That's what I heard, and there are less injuries in rugby because players don't wear projective gear (helmet, pads) so it is more of a wrestling match instead of a "run-and-strike" match. Anyone from Europe to chime in on this? It was also mentioned (all this is what I've heard as I've done neither football or rugby) that protective gear for football players is meant to project the person running and tackling the other (or in many ways a striking blow), the protective gear does not really protect the one getting hit.

I think the other danger of football is distraction, i.e. many young boys are taught going into pro football is a excellent career choice. If you can survive preparing yourself and get selected and still survive training, then by all means become an NFL player. However, pro bowl does not have many job openings (and most cannot qualify) and youngsters will be distracted away from career choices that have wider opportunities. We hear about some former NFL players that go on to successful careers after football, we don't hear from many other former NFL players that are broke.

Should football be outlawed? No but maybe let people know risks involved. Such legislation probably cause all sorts of bad fallout. I'd like to see US reduce its fascination with football. There are a lot of OTHER SPORTS besides football!

Some kids start playing football at age 5 in pop warner [popwarner.com], so lets not pretend this is a hazard only borne by adults making informed choices. I played football in middle school/high school, and I bet I suffered some brain injury because of it. I wouldn't say i was adequately informed then of the potential risks, and I likely would have made a poor decision even if I were informed. My parents, on the other hand, would probably have loved to know the true risks of a sport as their baby boy was out there knocking heads. Many of us were lead to believe that modern helmets all but alleviated the risk of brain injury.

Honestly, kids and young adults are being pressured by parents, coaches, peers into playing a sport that is now known to cause brain damage, and Slashdot can do nothing but complain about professional athletes pay and make fun of dumb jocks.

Any Football player that gets into the sport should know the risks involved. When your job is to play a full-contact sport, injuries happen. That's why they get multi-million dollar contracts. Their safety gear is all excellent, but even the best protection does not prevent every injury. Nobody is forcing them to play the game. They can walk away at any time.

Your first sentence is exactly why research like this is necessary. Prospective football players have every right to know exactly what they'll be risking if they play. And while no one is forcing them to play, the US does have a policy of banning certain activities for the detrimental effects on willing participants.

I would really like for the National Academic Decathlon to receive more attention than high school sports.

My school made it to the national level my senior year (I was not involved) and there was absolutely no mention of it in the local papers. Instead the papers continued their portrayal of our school as full of druggies, which well yes it was, but those druggies were very smart.

Is it ethical to provide an incentive to other human beings to engage in an activity that might lead to serious mental problems so you can get a few hours enjoyment?

I'd say yes, it's fine, as long as the participants understand the risk and feel like they're being fairly compensated for it. I think MMA, for example, looks awesomely fun. Doing it professionally carries a chance of serious harm coming to you. Is it worth it? Eh, not for me. I get paid for my brain working well. Letting someone bash it around an octagon is probably unwise. That, and I'm out of shape and...not 20. But am I going to impose MY value judgement on that on everyone? Nope.

I wonder how long is it going to take before this turns into a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" debate.

If you believe in evolution, the answer is obvious - the egg. There were dinosaur eggs long before there were chickens.

If you believe in creation, the answer is obvious - the egg. Because nothing, including chickens, can "evolve" from something else, so chickens come from chicken eggs, same as fish come from fish eggs and donuts come from those donut seeds you find inside every box of Cheerios.

Footballers do it for hours at a time, a few days a week, twenty or so weeks a year. Fighters only actually fight for five to fifty minutes on fight nights, which occur once a month on a busy schedule. When training they usually don't take very many hits to the head to ensure they don't get an accidental injury.